1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates broadly to a method and system for automated design, and to a data storage medium having stored thereon computer code means for instructing a computer to execute a method of automated design.
2. Description of Related Art
Over recent years, an extensive amount of research has been devoted to investigating computer generated or computer assisted design. However, compared with the substantive research efforts, there have been very few actual computer implementations presented, and to the applicant's knowledge no commercially available computer implementation product can currently be found in the market place. As an indication of this lack of successful implementation, it is noted that, for example, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Conference Design, Computing and Cognition '04 in July 2004, a small number of relatively limited demonstration programs were presented. It was noted during the conference that in spite of substantive research efforts, the impact of the research on actual designing practice has been low and it is arguably the lack of successful computer implementation that has led to the low impact.
The above-mentioned research can be classified as “generative design” and is related to three broad design-type categories, namely “shape grammar”, “genetic algorithms”, and “computational aesthetics”. One example of work in the area of shape grammar is Hau Hing Cau et al., “Evaluation of a 3D shape grammar implementation”, Design, Computing and Cognition '04, 357-376, 2004. Examples of work in the area of computational aesthetics are Zhen Yu Gu et al., “Formulation of aesthetic evaluation and selection”, Design, Computing and Cognition '04, 337-353, and Andres Gomez De Silva Garza et al., “A cognitive evaluation of a computer system for generating mondrian-like art work”, Design, Computing and Cognition '04, 79-96.
Research in the shape grammar field focuses on architectural and engineering shape computation as a formal approach for supporting style conformance. Shape grammar is centered around providing basic elements typically with predefined parameters, and providing rules that govern the relationship between design elements. The rules are complex and there is no established way to-date of deriving these rules. The complexity of the rules increases with the complexity of each design—making this method difficult to implement, in particular in a context where the designers explore a wide variety of design options before selecting the final form.
Research in genetic algorithms involves providing an initial or seeding population of designs, breeding from the initial population, the breeding comprising mutation and design cross-mixing resulting in crossing of genes, for creating an expanded population. Manual or algorithmic selection is then performed on the expanded population to either arrive at a new initial population or a final solution.
Finally, work in computational aesthetics centers around models or algorithms to “codify” what constitutes human aesthetic fitness evaluation, with the aim of automating selection and/or evaluation in computer design.
A common feature of typical design generation methods is that they involve setting up complex computer algorithms for each particular design problem making the methods unsuitable for practical applications in design.
Hence, there exists a need to provide a method or system to address one or more of the above problems.